The news last week that El Reg merchandising tentacle Cash'n'Carrion had sourced new tritium-powered glowrings prompted some atomic-powered nostalgia from those readers who'd bought the original Traser.
Way back in 2002, we laid our hands on a big batch of these novelty keyrings, and promptly shifted thousands of them. No …

Joe Public's appetite for new UAV tech must surely have a limit, but that's still some way off if the case of the SkyProwler "Multi-Mission VTOL Transformer Drone" is any indication.
Having soared past its $100,000 Kickstarter goal in a matter of days, Arizona-based Krossblade Aerospace Systems is set to unleash the vehicle …

This summer, the skies above Nevada will thunder to the sound of a mighty hybrid rocket motor, as the Boston University Rocket Propulsion Group (BURPG) sends its Starscraper vehicle past the symbolic 100km Kármán line.
BURPG group shot at motor test site
BURPG: Laughing gas and rubber
Having recently tin-rattled its way to …

A few days ago, we offered wobbly dining fans the Post-Pub Noshographic - a procedural flowchart to steer our beloved readers through the after-boozer neckfiller decision-making process.
That handy guide serves for immediate deployment as you stagger through the front door, a gibbering and dribbling mess in search of immediate …

Our post-pub nosh neckfiller recipes have proved immensely popular over the last few months, as we've strived to bring our beloved readers the very best antidotes to a rigorous night on the sauce.
However, amid the smacking of lips and the rattling of pots and pans, we have noticed a trend for commentards to decry some recipes …

Those of you who like your rockets liquid-fuelled and your altitudes suborbital might like to have a shufti at "Earendel", which promises to be "the first vehicle capable of reaching space, ie, greater than 100km, with an entirely open source design".
Cutaway view of the Earendel rocket Earendel (left) - named for the Anglo- …

LogoWatch
A Strategy Boutique tasked by the Swedish government to come up with a new brand identity for the land of Abba and surströmming has spunked God alone knows how much wonga to create a "global brand identity" comprising the country's flag and the word "Sverige".
The new Swedish brand frontage - with flag and shiny new font
Key …

Our pushing of the culinary envelope takes us into intergalactic space this week, as we present for your post-pub consideration the magnificent Red Dwarf chilli chutney egg sarnie, likened to "a cross between food and bowel surgery".
That's how Arnold Rimmer described Dave Lister's unholy creation in episode Thanks for the …

We recently and somewhat recklessly announced that we'd be eyeballing Gigli, Pearl Harbor and Battlefield Earth back-to-back, in an epic "unwatchablathon" designed to determine just how much cinematic drivel the human mind can handle in one sitting.
Our beloved readers are to blame for prompting this audacious experiment, having …

If you're one of those still waiting impatiently for the bloody flying car and robot butler we were promised back in the 1950s, and need a consolation quick fix of 21st-century domestic tech, then have a shufti at the Crystal Wash 2.0 - a bluetooth-enabled miracle washing orb currently the subject of a Kickstarter tin-rattle. …

Pics
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is likely to provoke a global geekgasm today with the surprise release of the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. It's a turbocharged version of the Pi B+, boasting a new Broadcom BCM2836 900MHz quad-core system-on-chip with 1GB of RAM – all of which will drive performance "at least 6x" that of the B+.
Speaking …

We're disappointed to report that despite our attempts last week to raise the tone of our post-pub neckfiller nosh recipes by the classy use of a soupçon of français, we have not yet attracted a sponsor willing to back our efforts to push the culinary envelope.
No matter, because the latest offering for your wobbly dining …

As winter tightens its frosty grip across the land, and a chill wind bites hard to the quick, the moment has arrived to contemplate a hearty post-pub dish designed to fill bellies on a budget and warm the cockles of the heart.
So hereforth, mes amis, we present for your dining pleasure our very own Special Projects Bureau …

Our piece earlier this week on a study which proved The Wizard of Oz is the "most significant" movie ever – by dint of being the flick most referenced in subsequent works – provoked some interesting comments from our ever-lively readers.
It goes without saying that a lot of your output centred on the researchers' possibly dodgy …

An Australian father and son team is attempting to develop a radical low Earth orbit spaceplane ultimately intended as a "space courier service" to return payloads from aloft.
High-altitude ballooning (HAB) vets Robert Brand and son Jason, 12, (pictured below after one of their balloon flights) are in the initial stages of " …

Researchers have used an interesting yardstick to determine that The Wizard of Oz is the most "significant" US movie ever, pipping Star Wars and Psycho into second and third spots in the significance league table.
Forget the critics' opinion, audience figures or box office take: what really sets a film apart is the number of …

Vid
The indefatigable Andrew Tridgell popped up at linux.conf.au in new Zealand last week, where he delivered an entertaining presentation on the state of play of porting ArduPilot to Linux.
ArduPilot is the open source software which controls our own Vulture 2 spaceplane on the 3DR Pixhawk autopilot. As Tridge demonstrated, it …

Alabama sits proudly at the top of the US teacher-pupil sex league, with one school employee per 193,975 residents being "accused or convicted" of engaging in illicit relations with a student during 2014.
That's according to a enlightening study by Terry Abbott - "a former chief of staff of the U.S. Department of Education" - …

The city of Dazhou in China's southwestern Sichuan Province is taking a hard line on what it believes is a significant contributor to the metropolis's "lingering" smog – the traditional practice of smoking bacon.
According to Xinhua, Dazhou has been suffering a nasty bout of persistent airborne PM2.5 particulates since the …

Icelandic beer botherer Stedji has unsurprisingly rather annoyed conservationists with the imminent release of a winter brew flavoured with smoked whale testicles, Visir reports.
The "Hvalur 2" brew comes on the heels of last winter's successful Hvalur ("Whale") concoction, which contained "among other things the viscera and …

Let's face it, anyone with any sense knows cows are far more agreeable when they're in pieces, and while throwing prime bovine bits on the barbecue is one the discerning gourmet's preferred methods of serving Miss Daisy, there are parts which, for whatever reason, have fallen from favour among Brit carnivores.
We can't speak for …

The BBC is having an Olympic swimming pool-sized field day at the news that the world's largest ship – the CSCL Globe - has docked at the Port of Felixstowe.
According to Auntie, the China Shipping Container Lines-owned behemoth "is more than 400m (1,312ft) long, the equivalent of eight Olympic-size swimming pools", while its …

It's fair to say that providing high-definition video to dogs was not a mission priority for the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team, but when a certain Pulse-Eight answered our Kickstarter tin-rattling last year, we were suddenly presented with the chance to push the envelope of canine entertainment solutions.
UK- …

The all-encompassing "selfie" has snapped the Fundéu BBVA's Spanish word of the year title for 2014, albeit in the leaner, meaner, and adapted form of selfi.
The choice acknowledges the continuing influx of Anglicisms into Spanish, despite previous efforts to suggest that local constructs autofoto or autorretrato might serve to …

We're now well into the season of festive excess, and doubtless readers will already be sustaining a severe pummelling to livers and credit cards in equal measure.
We can't do much to mitigate the effects of excess Yule spending, but we can offer you something substantial and yet a bit different to soak up the booze: the hearty …

It's been quite a week for the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team, as myself and Edge Research Laboratory's David Patterson travelled to Spaceport America in New Mexico, and took delivery of the Vulture 2 spaceplane in Denver, picking up a couple of rocket motor reloads along the way.
We covered plenty of road …

The Vulture 2 spaceplane arrived safely in the USA last week, and is currently resting at a secure facility in Denver courtesy of Jeff Anderton of video production outfit Mass Transit.
Our rocket ship's relocation came as part of my own trip Stateside, which saw myself and Edge Research Lab's David Patterson on a reccy to …

Our plucky Playmonaut sensationally landed at Spaceport America in New Mexico last Thursday, although sadly not this time at the controls of the Register's soaraway Vulture 2 rocket ship.
The diminutive Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) pilot walked the tarmac of the fabled gateway to the heavens as myself and David …

Legend has it that in the 1960s, one Daniel da Silva returned to his native Portugal following a stint in France and Belgium, with a vision of adapting the classic grilled ham and cheese croque-monsieur for local palates.
The result was the Francesinha ("Frenchie"), an example of what happens when you take a simple sarnie, crank …

The Brit post-pub gourmets among you will doubtless have indulged in the national pastime of staggering from the boozer to the nearest curry house, so it's no surprise that reader Martin Gregorie got in touch last week to suggest we venture into the hot and spicy by cooking up something with a bit of a kick.
A splendid idea, and …

Back in October, the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team welcomed our magnificent Kickstarter sponsors to Vulture Central, and among those who rolled up to be frisked by security at the door were representatives of London-based IT support firm Lucidica.
The Lucidica team at Vulture Central
With fighting livers at …

We're pleased to announce that we've reanimated our merchandising tentacle Cash'n'Carrion, so Reg fans can once again get a fix of top-notch Vulture Central kit.
Back when it was all fields round here, I was involved in setting up the original emporium, so I'm dead chuffed that we're back in the business of punting quality stuff …

Wannabe Bond villains who'd been planning a world-domination strategy involving sharks armed with a frikkin' lasers should be aware that Wicked Lasers has announced it's withdrawing its "horrendously dangerous" handheld death rays.
Long exposure shot showing laser in street
According to a brief email from the company's press …

It's onwards and eastwards this week with our post-pub nosh neckfiller as we travel to Slovakia in search of bryndzové halušky.
This traditional dish of potato dumplings (halušky) is topped with bryndza sheep cheese, and endears itself to British palates with the inclusion of bacon, the miracle powers of which to counter the …

It's fair to say that our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission has attracted a broad spectrum of sponsors, and among those who've climbed aboard is NXT, which aims to be the first cryptocurrency into space, or at least the stratosphere.
NXT is a Bitcoin rival launched in 2013, "currently positioned at #5 by …

We invite Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) fans to stick the kettle on, make a nice cuppa and enjoy a recent interview myself and Vulture 2 rocket motor wrangler Paul "Lord Shax" Shackleton did with Gareth Mitchell for the BBC World Service's Click.
Good stuff, and we'd like to add that the Southampton Uni design boys …

The first Hasselblad camera to travel into space sold last week at auction for an astronomical $275,000.
View of the first Hasselblad in space
The first Hasselblad in space, and now sold for a cool $275K
The 500c and 80mm Zeiss lens accompanied Walter M Schirra on the Mercury MA-8 mission in October 1962. Fellow astronaut …

We invite Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) fans to give it up today for SecQuest, one of the magnificent corporate responders to our Kickstarter tin-rattling to take the Vulture 2 ballocket launch to Spaceport America.
We'll be bringing you details on all our splendid sponsors in due course, but let's kick off with a …

It's been two years since we at El Reg's Special Projects Bureau brought hungry readers the last of our post-pub nosh deathmatches – a lively head-to-head featuring souse versus scrapple – and by popular demand we've decided to reheat the concept as part of Vulture Central's Weekend Edition.
To recap, the idea was to present …

It's Friday, so we invite those of you who are counting down the seconds until pub o'clock to spot the fatal concept error in the Alfah Mobile - "a small suction free attachment that attaches the back of your mobile device to your steering wheel or dashboard for convenience and hands free driving".
This less-than-ingenious …

We're distraught to report that thesp Lindsay Lohan has ignored a recent Twitter request for a few words on our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission - the audacious namesake ballocket initiative which will see her moniker written gloriously across the stratosphere.
Our tweet to Lindsay Lohan
No doubt Ms Lohan …

The first Hasselblad camera to travel into space will go under the hammer next week, over 50 years after it was carried aloft by Walter M Schirra on the Mercury MA-8 mission.
View of the first Hasselblad in space
The first Hasselblad in space - yours for $10k+
Camera enthusiast Schirra bought the 500c and 80mm Zeiss lens at …

We're obliged to spaceplane fan Mike Kimber for sending over the first evidence we've received of our magnificent Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mug in the wild, and being put to extremely laudable use.
Mike wrote: "A while ago you published a recipe for a super strength mead in honour of the LOHAN project... Well …

The matter of whether our Vulture 2 spaceplane's servos will freeze at altitude will be resolved on Saturday by our US allies at Edge Research Lab, when they send a complete spaceplane autopilot/battery/servo rig stratowards.
Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) regulars will be aware we've been fretting about our …

It's all go at Vulture Central today as skilled operatives prepare to ship our LOHAN Kickstarter reward t-shirts, which flew in the door late last week and will shortly be flying straight back out.
We're sure those of you who stumped the cash for this top-notch apparel will be as pleased as we are with the finished products, …